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Category Archives: privatisation

Com.Pinarayi Vijayan, Chief Minister Kerala expressed his strong protest against the privatisation of six airports, including Thiruvananthapuram and demanded that the proposal be dropped. he supported the Airport Employees Union in their struggle against privatisation.

Like this:

All the airports in the country were under the government managed by the Airport Authority of India. As part of the new economic policy and so called liberalisation, the biggest and most revenue earning airports in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hydeabad and Kochi were handed over to private companies. The proposal to privatise Kolkatta and Chennai could not be implemented due to strong protests by the people and employees.

The privatisation under PPP ( Public Private Participation) is justified, that it will improve operation, management and development and the AAI / Government has not sufficient funds. This is only a lame excuse. The real intention is to hand over these airports to privatise to accumulate their wealth and make huge profits. Though some improvements are made, which AAI can also do efficiently, the charges for all services in the privatised airports have gone sky high with prices of coffee, tea, tiffins, meals as also prices of other commodities. While coffee/tea are available at nominal prices in the AAI controlled Kolkatta and Chennai airports, the passenger has to pay more than double of that amount in Mumbai and Delhi. Further, the corporates are getting huge rents for the buildings in and around the airports, which naturally would have been that of AAI.

Now, the Central Cabinet has decided to privatise six more profit earning Airports viz. Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Lucknow, Guwahati, Thiruvananthapuram and Mangaluru. The profit of AAI will further be reduced due to this decision. After some time, it will be only loss making airports under the operation of the AAI.

This privatisation of airports has to be resisted and defeated in the interests of the people, the passengers and the employees.